Forecasts for Upper Cook Inlet sockeye salmon have dropped precipitously, just in time for the state\u2019s fishermen to have another beef with Alaska\u2019s fisheries managers in a few months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2017, a run of approximately 4.0 million sockeye salmon is forecasted to return to UCI with a commercial harvest of 1.7 million,\u201d reads an Alaska Department of Fish and Game release. \u201cThe forecasted commercial harvest in 2017 is 1.2 million less than the 20-year average harvest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Upper Cook Inlet sockeye salmon harvest of 2.4 million, which was 17 percent less than the recent 10-year average, fetched an ex-vessel price of $1.50 per pound for a total value of $21 million.<\/p>\n
With an average weight of 5.8 pounds per fish, 1.2 million sockeye are worth $10.4 million in 2016 prices.<\/p>\n
For commercial Upper Cook Inlet sockeye fishermen, the forecast plays into a long-standing management feud the Alaska Board of Fisheries will have to pick up at the beginning of 2017, largely concerning whether or not management policies have been harming the sockeye stocks \u2014 and fishermen \u2014 by allowing too many to escape to their spawning grounds.<\/p>\n
Managers predict the overall size of the expected run, then chip away how many spawning fish they need to send back up the river, then divide the rest between commercial, sport fishing, subsistence and personal use fisheries.<\/p>\n
For all users, the forecast is 2.6 million fish, about 21 percent below average and among the lower third of harvest forecasts going back to 1985. Eight of the last 27 years have had forecasts as low or lower.<\/p>\n
The commercial harvest expectation is 1.7 million. If the fleet harvests that much, it will be the lowest harvest since 2000 and 1998, when Cook Inlet fishermen harvested 1.3 million and 1.2 million sockeye, respectively.<\/p>\n
Prior to that, the harvest hadn\u2019t dipped below 1.7 million fish since 1981.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gonna be pretty tricky,\u201d said Aaron Dupuis, the assistant area management biologist for the commercial section of the Upper Cook Inlet ADFG office. \u201cThings will be much more restrictive.\u201d<\/p>\n
This small of a forecast triggers the most tightly controlled management tiers. Sockeye setnetters will only have 24 hours to fish in addition to their normal Monday and Thursday 12-hour openings. Drift netters will have to stay within certain sections, instead of fishing in the middle of Cook Inlet.<\/p>\n
Commercial fishermen aren\u2019t happy with the forecast.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty alarming,\u201d said Andy Hall, a sockeye setnetter and president of the Kenai Peninsula Fishermen\u2019s Coalition. Hall said he can\u2019t remember off the top of his head the last time a season forecast gave his fleet so little. \u201cI had a couple fishermen write to me and say they\u2019re alarmed. It\u2019s going to color how we respond to some of the proposals that go to the Board of Fisheries this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
ADFG biologists acknowledge that high escapements might be a part of the low forecast, but say the situation is still too complex and murky to know for certain.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s possible (that overescapement led to a small forecast),\u201d said Dupois. \u201cWe won\u2019t really know until we have complete brood information for the most recent escapements. It\u2019s definitely a possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pat Shields, the commercial fishing management biologist for the Kenai area ADFG office, went into more detail about the causes of next year\u2019s small forecast.<\/p>\n
Large escapements, he said, tend to produce smaller fry \u2014 the baby salmon waiting in river systems to swim out into the ocean to grow up. If fry survival drops, it could intensify low returns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere can be multiple reasons,\u201d he said. \u201cIt appears ocean conditions have not been as favorable in the last couple years. I know it\u2019s not satisfying for even me to say that\u2026but there are different things that affect that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Water temperatures for the Gulf of Alaska and its river systems have been rising in certain areas, leading in 2015 and 2016 to a patch of water 2 degrees Celsius over the average, called \u201cthe Blob\u201d by scientists. This warmer water, said Shields, looks to be a contributing factor to salmon marine survival.<\/p>\n
Rising temperatures only mask the problem of overescapement, according to Dave Martin, president of the industry group Upper Cook Inlet Drift Association.<\/p>\n
Martin said the forecast validates the group\u2019s long held claim that ADFG and the Board of Fisheries have let too many sockeye salmon escape over the years, which both hurts the fleet\u2019s bottom line and future salmon returns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt kind of goes along with what we\u2019ve been saying all along,\u201d he said. \u201cYou keep grossly overescaping the systems then it\u2019ll produce smaller returns. If we managed the fishery scientifically, we wouldn\u2019t have these ups and downs.\u201d<\/p>\n
By \u201cscientifically,\u201d Martin means managing to the federal fisheries standard of maximum sustainable yield, a different metric with more economic considerations than in state management.<\/p>\n
Hall agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been overescaping these rivers year after year, and you have to wonder,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not a scientist, but I\u2019ve spoken with former and retired ADFG biologists who say, \u2018we can\u2019t keep doing this, this is going to come back on us one of these days.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Martin and Hall want the Alaska Board of Fisheries, which sets management playbooks for Alaska\u2019s in-state fisheries within three miles of the shore, to use this forecast as an example of failed, allocation-driven policy making.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating to see this happening,\u201d said Hall. \u201cI just wish all these political proposals weren\u2019t there and the biologists could just manage. But a lot of what\u2019s happening isn\u2019t driven by science. It\u2019s driven by politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Board of Fisheries will hold a meeting in February for Upper Cook Inlet finfish, which includes salmon. These meetings, held once every three years, are typically among the most combative and political in the state\u2019s fisheries, and have already been the subject of heated discussions in 2016 simply around where the meeting will be held.<\/p>\n
In 2017, the Board of Fisheries will also have to deal with a recent federal court decision that will require state managers to have a federal fishery management plan and stick to the standards required by federal law.<\/p>\n
\u2022 DJ Summers is a reporter for the Alaska Journal of Commerce. He can be reached at daniel.summers@alaskajournal.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Forecasts for Upper Cook Inlet sockeye salmon have dropped precipitously, just in time for the state\u2019s fishermen to have another beef with Alaska\u2019s fisheries managers in a few months. \u201cIn 2017, a run of approximately 4.0 million sockeye salmon is forecasted to return to UCI with a commercial harvest of 1.7 million,\u201d reads an Alaska […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":22123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-22122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22122"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}